With chapters on Heinrich Himmler, the "Night of the Long Knives," the Waffen SS, the Holocaust, the Nuremberg trials, and ODESSSA, the organization of former SS members, Nigel Cawthorne provides a concise yet detailed look at one of the most feared organizations ever conceived by the human imagination. The Schutzstaffel, or SS, was the brutal elite force of the Nazi party, founded by Hitler in 1925 to be his personal bodyguard. From 1929 it was headed by Heinrich Himmler, who built it up from 300 members to well over a million by 1945, when the SS oversaw almost every function of the state.